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Many cultures do show the tracing of the female lineage, this however has got nothing to do with the actual wielding of power. That the lineage be traced by female descent is normal: after all it is women that give birth; power, however, is then to be found on the avuncular level: the brother of the mother, the uncle (lat. avunculus, hence avuncular), is the head of the family. This is true of the Iroquois, as of the ancient Hebrews, as of Islam. Nothing feminist about it, it is simply a way of tracing descent: of keeping track of people in relation to oneself.
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I've read that in Carthage (a major power in the world at the time), inheritance and power passed through women rather than through men. I've read that in several primative tribes the Chief would be a man, but that the women of the tribe were the ones who chose which man would be the Chief, and could remove the Chief from his position if he proved incompetent..

If what "I've read" is true, the ability to say who your leader is going to be would have been a very real wielding of power by women.

ping :)

The Carthaginians had a gruesome practice of child sacrifice at places called tophets. If this was a matriarchal society (I don't think it was), it was not one anyone wants to emulate.

Carthage, like many other societies of the ancient world maintained the matrilinear descent. This does not mean 'power'. As to the several primitive tribes where the Chief would be a man, but the women of the tribe were the ones who chose which man would be the Chief, and could remove the Chief from his position if he proved incompetent, this can be true, but the pool from which the new chief can be picked is determined by the culture, making the choice very restricted, and limited within certain bounds.
A similar situation seemed to be in vogue in the early sumerian culture where the godess Inanna 'chose' the new king through a blind draw: the candidates had to find a certain gem, hidden among various piles of dates; of course the whole affaire was carefully rigged, so much so, that we have the'texts' on which the players acted their parts.

I've read that in Carthage (a major power in the world at the time), inheritance and power passed through women rather than through men. I've read that in several primative tribes the Chief would be a man, but that the women of the tribe were the ones who chose which man would be the Chief, and could remove the Chief from his position if he proved incompetent.

And the common denominator of them is that they are either primitive (ie, never developed into a civilization) or were defeated by patriarchal cultures.

In another thread, my essay makes the point that the reason patriarchal cultures finally dominated, is that they gave the males a better incentive to fight for their land and families (because it became THEIRS), and to plan for the future, so as to be able to pass along wealth to kids that they had bonded to as being uniquely theirs